Several weeks ago, before the EDA Consortium was re-branded as the ESD Alliance, I had a chance to speak by phone with Bob Smith, Executive Director of the organization. I started by asking what concerned him the most about the re-launch. Bob was too optimistic to pick up on that negative note.

Instead he said, “It looks like we’re going to have a really good turnout for our event next week on March 30th, with well over 100 people expected. We are billing the evening as 90-percent social and only 10-percent business. I’ll speak for about 5 minutes and no longer, introducing the new name for EDAC.

“Mostly we want to have a get-together where people who haven’t seen each for a long time can enjoy catching up. We honestly hope that people will just have a good time. Also, it’s great that a number of the board members will be there.”

“Can I play the devil’s advocate for a moment?” I asked. “Is renaming the organization an exciting way to push EDAC forward, or simply an acknowledgment of a reality that’s been in place for several years? IP has been important for a long time, ARM has been on the board for a long time, and MIPS before that.”

Bob replied, “Well, I’m certainly excited about this re-launch. It was a challenge to settle on the new name and perhaps there was a concern about how the board would react.

“After all, three of the board members – the CEOs of Synopsys, Mentor, and Cadence, are dyed-in-the-wool veterans of EDA. There could have been push back along the lines of: Gee. We’ve been an organization for EDA since the beginning, so why change it now?

“To their great credit, however, that is not what they said. Instead it was: We’re now part of something much bigger.

“The entire board is completely in agreement with the premise that, although EDAC’s been just about EDA for over twenty years, today design requires an entire ecosystem. One that includes advanced packaging, embedded software, and IP, as well as EDA.

“The board recognizes that the new name should reflect that reality, we are all part of something bigger today. Our new name reflects a very different way of looking at the world.

“Now we are the ESD Alliance – Electronic System Design Alliance – with a much broader mission than the former group. Hopefully over time, the board will evolve to include members from all of the different facets of the ecosystem. I’m confident that will happen.

“Meanwhile, it is very exciting to see the ongoing efforts of our established working groups. The Export Committee continues to do good work, as does License Management and Emerging Companies. New groups are also forming to work in the areas of IP Fingerprinting and 3D/Advanced Packaging for better cooperation between manufacturing and design.

“There will be a lot more news out of all of these committees over the next year, I am quite sure.

“This is why, rather than have concerns about the change we’re announcing, I’m out talking with lots of people about joining in with us. What I’m hearing in the process is that many people are as energized about the opportunities here as I am.

“We are all looking at things with a much bigger field of view. There are big and interesting opportunities ahead for all of us in an atmosphere of collaboration.”

As much as the energetic re-branding of the EDA Consortium is to be admired, the name of the new organization is causing distress: If you want to find out more about the newly launched ESD Alliance, your online search will be fraught with angst. Why?

If you type www.EDSA.com into your browser, you’re directed to California-based Power Analytics Corp, a company that facilitates “the design, operation, and optimization of Distributed Energy Resources.”

Surely that can’t be right. Is it dot-org instead of dot-com?

Nope: If you type www.EDSA.org into your browser, you get the Canadian-based Edmonton and District Soccer Association, which “provides soccer programs in the Edmonton district for adults of all ages.”

Wrong again.

If you then change tactics and google EDS-Alliance, you get at least two important hits:

1) A link to the Ehlers Danlos Syndrome Alliance, a support group for people who suffer from a debilitating condition that affects the connective tissue in the body, and…

2) The EDS Alliance sponsored by Electronic Data Systems Corp, which includes companies like Oracle and SAP that “compete against each other, but each supplies part of the framework EDS wants to market to customers.”

One press release for that EDS Alliance is dated 2005, however, so you ask: What? Did Oracle join the EDS Alliance a full 10 years ago before it actually existed?

That can’t be right, so you go back to square one: What am I doing wrong?

Suddenly, the solution is clear. You’re mis-typing the name of the new consortium alliance. It’s not the EDS Alliance, it’s the ESD Alliance.

You’ve got the letter switched in the acronym: It’s not E-D-S-A. It’s E-S-D-A.

So now you search for www.ESDA.com – and promptly pull up a German-based company that provides third-party sourcing for retailers in the hosiery industry.

Argg! Maybe it’s dot-org, not dot-com?

So you type www.ESDA.org into your browser – and this time get the New York-based EOS/ESD Association, “a professional voluntary association dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of electrostatic discharge (ESD) avoidance.”

What is going on??

Fully exasperated, you put www.ESD-Alliance.org into your browser – spelling out Alliance in the URL – and voila! Success at last!

This URL directs you to the EDAC website, and all is right with the world once again. EDAC, of course, now being the ESD Alliance.

But, wait.

Happily posted within the pages of the EDAC website, there are five 1-minute spots from five of the seven EDAC board members: Lip-Bu Tan, Aart de Geus, Dean Drako, Wally Rhines, and Simon Segars. You listen to the videos and find that each gentleman consistently praises an organization called EDAC.

EDAC. EDAC. EDAC.

But what will be the short, pithy name for the freshly minted ESD Alliance?

ESDA?

You look closely at the word ESDA and realize it hardly rolls off the tongue. Where’s the pnuemonic that will help us remember this kludge? Where’s the trick that will get the industry off on the right foot? The easily remembered acronym that Thought Leaders in the Alliance can use when they re-record their one minute loyalty oaths endorsements?

After some thought, the solution becomes obvious: Henry Ford.

If Henry Ford’s son, Edsel, had had a twin sister her name would have been Edsa. Edsel and Edsa Ford.

And if Edsa’s birth certificate had a typo, her name would have been Esda, Esda Ford, which is how we can embrace the acronym going forward.

The new ESD Alliance can now be called ESDA for short. Easily remembered by noting that Edsel Ford’s fictional twin sister Edsa’s name was mis-typed on her birth certificate as Esda.

There’s a perfect storm currently underway at the EDA Consortium based in Silicon Valley. First of all, after twenty years of distinguished service to the organization, the last ten as Executive Director, Robert Gardner is retiring. His leadership and talents will be sorely missed, as an industry expert and organizational wizard, and as as accomplished musician providing endless hours of sophisticated entertainment at countless EDAC events. Uniquify’s Bob Smith, himself an accomplished, well-known player in the EDA industry, has been tapped to take over for Gardner. [See our conversation below …]

Second of all, for the first time the consortium has two individuals serving simultaneously as chairman: Cadence CEO Lip-Bu Tan and PDF Solutions President & CEO John Kibarian. Although previously active on the board, neither of these gentlemen has served as EDAC co-Chair; all signs suggest that their joint efforts, and fortuitous synergy of design and manufacturing, are promoting fresh sensibilities and renewed commitments to collegiality across the EDAC membership.

Third, and perhaps most importantly, IP is the new black in EDA. When the consortium was initiated in the last millennium, the membership really was all about electronic design automation. Today, many ‘generations’ later, the name of the game in semiconductor design is reuse and third-party IP. And it’s in that spirit that both Sonics President & CEO Grant Pierce and ARM CEO Simon Segars are currently serving on the consortium’s Board of Directors, along with EDA stalwarts Mentor’s Wally Rhines, Synopsys’ Aart de Geus, IC Manage’s Dean Drako, and Atrenta’s Ajoy Bose.

And so the world turns: The EDA Consortium is undergoing profound changes, and in so doing reflects the evolutionary cataclysm overtaking the entire semiconductor design and manufacturing supply chain.

***************** A conversation with Bob Smith …

WWJD: It’s wonderful news for EDAC that you have agreed to take up of the reigns as Executive Director.

Bob Smith: I’m very excited, particularity because this opportunity literally came out of the blue. It was not on my radar. After I took some time to think about it, I decided I could do some good here. Certainly, I have the background in the industry and know a lot of players. The more I thought about it, the more I got excited about this new and different kind of challenge.

WWJD: How would you differentiate your upcoming role at EDAC from your previous industry experience?

Bob Smith: In all of my past experience in the electronics industry, I’ve worked for companies pushing their products or their initiatives, doing marketing, business development, establishing strategic alliances. The key in all of it has been about representing the interests of a company.

Now with EDAC, all of that is quite different. I’m being brought into a role here where I will try to take an organization and grow it, perhaps change it a bit, and represent the interests of a whole bunch of companies in the space. I’ll be working to find the common interests that overlap [among the member companies].

Look at the Big Three in EDA, Mentor, Synopsys and Cadence. Are they fierce competitors? Absolutely, day in and day out. But they also have some things they feel very passionately and similarly about, things of high value to them. Some the committee work of EDAC [fairly summarizes several of these issues].

For example, export control. The average lay person doesn’t stand around and talk about EDA because it’s mysterious, and the same is true for some government bureaucrats. It’s hard [for these individuals] to fully understand what is mission critical to the U.S., and what is not, things like verification software for instance. EDAC has done good work in this area [helping to clarify the technology].

Piracy is another issue that’s huge for EDAC. There’s a lot of interest here for the industry, because software theft is a real and true issue for everyone in EDA.

And then there’s interoperability. EDAC’s work has been really useful here, because the industry’s gotten together and said: We’ll all agree that these are the platforms and the variances in the operating systems that we’re going to support and encourage. If you’re supporting a customer base that needs 50 different versions [of your software], the costs run through the roof. But thanks to a well-run EDAC group [tracking operating systems and platforms], the industry has listened to the customers and the companies that support them and maintained a roadmap [that benefits everyone].

In all of these things — export control, piracy, interoperability — EDAC’s work shows that it behooves the companies in the consortium to cooperate on these issues.

Meanwhile, above all of this there is a bigger challenge. I think for EDAC, the world has changed. It’s important for us to ask: How can we become more important to your, our members, and more relevant again.

EDAC started back when I was at Synopsys. In those days, it was just between the EDA software folks. In the [ensuring years], the question’s been asked: Is EDA important? Of course, the answer is absolutely! The semiconductor industry would come to a grinding halt, would be brought to its knees, if EDA software was turned off.

Conversely, you have to look at chips today and see that EDA is not the be-all and end-all. IP is also critical, and embedded software, and packaging. They’re all critical, so now what’s really interesting is that this environment/ecosystem we are playing in is quite broad.

One good sign that EDAC understands that, a huge step in the right directions, is having Simon Segars on the Board of Directors. All these crazy chips being designed today? It’s not uncommon for IP to represent 70-to-80 percent of the chip.

At the next level is the amount of the software that has to be written, tested, and validated at all different levels. From microcode to embedded and application layers, all of this consumes far more resources than just the basic hardware design of the chip.

At the same time that I’m sensing all of this, everyone in EDAC seems to be saying something similar: Yes, we need to keep what we have [as an organization], but we also need to look at the bigger picture.

In the end, it’s about getting the chip to market with the EDA industry saying: Yes, we’re competitors and sometimes it’s pretty brutal, but we’re also owners of this big worldwide market, and we want to make sure that collectively there’s not another enemy out there that might limit our market.

WWJD: With all of this in mind, where do you focus your initial efforts at EDAC?

Bob Smith: Clearly there are a whole bunch of different angles of attack, and at this point I have way more questions than answers.

But I do know this is a healthy industry being driven by engineering. There has been marketing done in the past, and maybe even some today, to drive more [young] engineers to go into this industry. It seems to me that with everything from wireless technology to IoT, all of the glamor seems to be going to those industries.

Is that a problem for EDA? Perhaps. I don’t know the answer yet, but it is my suspicion that this in an area that EDAC needs to look at closely — creating enthusiasm for being in EDA or IP companies, creating the embedded stuff that’s under the hood.

WWJD: Are you working closely with Bob Gardner in taking over the reigns?

Bob Smith: Bob and I are working together on the transition. Not surprisingly, it’s like drinking from a fire hose and I need help. But Bob is more than willing to help and for that I’m grateful. Realistically, I don’t expect many big changes in the beginning months, and I certainly didn’t want to come in and upset the apple cart just prior to DAC. That would be wrong and not well advised.

WWJD: EDAC is one of the sponsors of DAC. Do you see yourself advocating for changes there?

Bob Smith: DAC is a complex event with several sponsors, including IEEE, ACM and EDAC. Among these groups there are all kinds of opinions and viewpoints, but certainly I think that everybody involves realizes that with change comes an opportunity to re-energize.

WWJD: It sounds like you’re looking at the big picture.

Bob Smith: Eventually, EDAC is all about how to include more people [in the discussion] who are participating in what creates a chip. Of course, IP is becoming part of it, but there are other important pieces that also need to be embraced as well.

The industry and the consortium need to grow the pie, to bring in all kinds of people, including the foundries. Today there’s an incredible amount of cooperation between EDA, IP vendors, and the foundries. I cannot develop a good piece of IP without the design rules [provided by the foundries]. Meanwhile, if you are a foundry, you’re highly dependent on what kind of IP is available, verified, etc.

WWJD: Given all of this evolution, is EDA Consortium too restrictive a name for the organization?

Bob Smith: The consortium today represents a big environment that’s growing even bigger, so maybe in the future the name will change. In the meanwhile, my focus is on building consensus among the groups in the environment and on making the consortium an even more visible [player] in the industry.

WWJD: Bob Gardner has raised the cultural zeitgeist in the consortium with his commitment to great music. Are you by any chance a musician as well?

Bob Smith: [laughing] I’m going to have to shift the emphasis in EDAC from music to wine.

WWJD: So given that you’re an award-winning vintner, the focus will now be on nothing less than great wine?

Given that history and innovation are being featured here in this space this week, it’s only appropriate to highlight the fact that EDAC is hosting a very interesting event related to history and innovation in Silicon Valley next week.

On Wednesday, October 16th, those who have made massive contributions to the EDA industry will be highlighted and celebrated at a black-tie optional dinner at the Computer History Museum. If you’re interested in rubbing elbows with the powerful and prolific, you should be going to this event. If you want a chance to bid at auction for lunch with today’s corporate leaders in EDA, you should be going to this event. If you think said corporate leaders make enough money to pay for your lunch, rather than vice versa, you should still be going to this event.

That’s because, if you go to the EDAC dinner and if you contribute any amount of money amidst the zaniness of a wine-fueled auction on Wednesday evening, the people who run the CHM will use your donation to create a new gallery in their museum – a long-overdue display that promises to showcase the contributions electronic design automation has made to the development of modern technology.

At some level, this dinner is wonderful and excellent. At another level, it’s just plain silly. Anybody who knows “EDA: Is where Electronics Begins”, knows that the last 50 years in the semiconductor industry have been built on increasingly sophisticated design automation.

You don’t need the Computer History Museum to tell you that. You don’t need the museum to tell you that it’s no longer about how many angels a theologian can place on the head of a pin; now it’s about how many transistors a design engineer can place on a silicon die. It’s that simple and that complicated, both at the same time.

And it’s those millions of transistors, now into the billions, that have made everything that we love here in the 21st century possible: tablets, smartphones, ubiquitous connectivity, wireless car fobs and the NSA. So go to this dinner.

If you know who these people are without even seeing their last names, you should be at the dinner on Wednesday. If you know how much at least 5 of these people made selling their companies to other people on this list, you should be at the dinner on Wednesday. If you want to help sculpt the history of this industry, as least the way the story will be told by the Computer History Museum, you should be at this dinner on Wednesday.

It costs $200 if you’re a member of EDAC, $250 if you’re not. Aw come’on. Shell out the money. Go to the dinner. Nobody’s getting any younger and this luminous group may never be in the same room at the same time ever again.

The facts surrounding their contributions, and probably yours as well, will be told far better by the Computer History Museum with the funds that will be raised at the EDAC dinner. Be there, observe the group, and enjoy the fact that you’re involved in the most interesting industry in the world.

From the podium in San Jose’s DoubleTree Hotel, Jasper Design Automation President & CEO Kathryn Kranen introduced tonight’s EDAC CEO Forecast Event as being “practically perfection” and she was right. With 97 people in the room, the event ran for 97 minutes and the audience [undoubtedly] gave the panel discussion a 97% approval rating. Kudos to all involved, including EDAC for hosting, and OCP-IP, Mod Marketing, and the DoubleTree for sponsoring the event.

Kranen started off the evening by bragging on good news out of EDA: It’s up and to the right for revenue in the industry, with a 4.9 percent increase between 3Q11 and 3Q12. She cited increased stock valuations over the last year for ARM [37%], Cadence [30%], Mentor [26%], PDF Solutions [98%], and Synopsys [17%] as an indication of the viability of EDA as an investment vehicle: If you’d put $100 into each of these companies a year ago, she said, you would have netted a 41% increase in a portfolio today worth $706.90, beating out other investment indices such as the NASDAQ and S&P 100 over the same time period.

[Kranen didn’t mention, however, that if you’d put all $500 into PDF Solutions a year ago, your portfolio would be almost $1000 at this point. Perhaps no one in EDA would be so imprudent as to put all of their eggs in one basket?]

In her capacity as EDAC Chair, Kranen celebrated five new members of the consortium: Blackcomb Design Automation, Sigasi, Vayavya Labs, VWORKS/ASTC, and Tech-X Corp. Considering the rate of acquisitions of smaller EDA companies by bigger EDA companies these days, five new members of EDAC is most certainly something to celebrate.

Kranen talked about the new EDAC website, as well as upcoming industry events: DATE in March, the Jim Hogan/Joe Costello interview in May, DAC in June, and an EDA Reunion Event at the Computer History Museum in October. Reflecting on the EDA industry’s renewed sense of community and optimism, Kranen then introduced Needham & Co’s Rich Valera, who in turn introduced the evening’s panelists:

Valera’s discussion with the five panelist over the next hour was based on their responses to a recent poll of EDAC members regarding various issues swirling about in the industry today. The panelists and tonight’s audience saw the slides showcasing the results of the poll at the same time.

************************EDA Consolidation …

Of the poll respondents, 75% said consolidation has not helped innovation, although 50% believe it has helped pricing. Approximately 50% believe the three big companies will consolidate down to two in the next several years.

Rich Valera asked for a response from the panelists.

Aart de Geus – Unfortunately, the question doesn’t include a definition of innovation. We distinguish between point innovation and systemic innovation, and in the area of the latter, Synopsys is the most innovative company in the industry. Consolidation has not hurt us at all.

Wally Rhines – For once, we agree with Aart [laughter]. Startups developing a new technology and then being acquired is the source of innovation. Consolidation, meaning acquisition, is the way innovation is implemented in EDA.

Lip-Bu Tan – We provide real value to our customers as we continue to innovate, and last year we raised out prices which is very appropriate. We allow our customers be more successful.

Wally Rhines – We are on the same learning curve in EDA as the semiconductor industry. As we grow, the unit cost of tools per transistor changes in exactly the same way as the unit cost per transistor. When the transistor unit costs go down, so do the tools.

Rich Valera – And the three big companies consolidating down to two?

Wally Rhines – For the past 15 years, Mentor, Cadence, and Synopsys have provided structure in EDA, while the overall market share for these three companies has remained the same. The industry’s very stable with the current situation.

Lip-Bu Tan – As an industry matures, it consolidates. But it is also good for the customers to offer choices to them.

Raul Camposano – The real question should be: Will we become part of a bigger industry? For instance, should we be part of the fabs? Or perhaps become part of a company like ANSYS, a company with revenues higher than the EDA companies, but lower than ARM. We definitely need to think bigger than just the die.

************************Moore’s Law …

Of the poll respondents, approximately 30% believe that Moore’s law can be extended through FinFET technology, 50% are not sure what would help, 20% believe “other” technologies would solve the conundrum, while a resounding 0% believe EUV lithography will provide any help at all.

Rich Valera asked for responses.

Aart de Geus – Moore’s law is not broken. Nonetheless, FinFET is a fabulous discontinuity, with 14-nanometer FinFET’s not long in coming out of the fabs.

Wally Rhines – Moore’s law is exponential, and even Gordon Moore acknowledged that no exponential is forever. Mathematically, however, Moore’s law of scaling is becoming irrelevant as the cost-per-transistor learning curve stays the same with either FinFET or 3D packaging. Meanwhile, we have so much capacity in place, we can cruise through 28 and 20 nanometers. Most importantly, whether stacked dies or FinFETs, it all provides opportunity for innovation and growth in EDA.

Rich Valera noted that companies like Apple, Samsung, and Google have benefited from verticalization in product areas such as smart phones and tablets. He asked if those companies are buying more tools, or if not, does it mean a net negative for EDA.

Simon Segars – Verticalization makes no difference to EDA, because there will always be people approaching design from many different ways, with lots of different performance points. Just because a few companies are doing things a certain way – companies like Apple, Google or Samsung – doesn’t mean there aren’t still lots of choices about how to do things, whether the industry is integrated or disaggregated.

Wally Rhines – When in doubt, I refer back to the data. The concentration in cell phone providers peaked in 2007; today that sector is not as consolidated as it was 6 years ago. Consolidation is never a permanent state of affairs.

Lip-Bu Tan – There is a net gain with verticalization, because growth then is clearly application-driven.

Rich Valera asked panelists to pick one over-arching concern from the list.

Aart de Geus – Synopsys works on all of this!

Wally Rhines – The real question is, which area of concern would benefit most from a discontinuity in the technology? That might well be analog and mixed-signal design automation.

************************IPOs in EDA …

Of the respondents, 81% said there would be no IPOs in the next 12-18 months, with only 19% believing there was a possibility. Comments regarding the outlook for IPOs in EDA included: “Bleak”, “Extremely light”, “Very poor”, and “Not so good, as exits have been disappointing to the VCs”.

Rich Valera asked for feedback.

Raul Camposano – This may be true in North America, but don’t forget about opportunities for IPO-like business investments and growth in countries such as China and Chile. There you will find VCs still willing to invest in EDA.

************************Q&A with the audience …

Q1 – Why did ARM endorse the Cadence acquisition of Tensilica?

Simon Segars – The cost of innovation keeps going up. Tensilica is a good small company that’s been around for a long time. Their processors sit next to ARM processors on-chip, so the Cadence acquisition will benefit our mutual customers.

Q2 – Does Mentor get the last laugh over critics in the past who have been skeptical about Mentor’s investments in software for designing the harness for automotive electronics?

Wally Rhines – It did seem like a strange investment 20 years ago when we introduced the product. People asked, is it really EDA? However, we accelerated the investment 15 years ago which has paid off. We saw a 40-percent increase in revenues over the last quarter. But it is the type of investment you will only see if you live long enough. [laughter]

Q3 – What about the hypothesis that Intel will purchase Synopsys one of these days?

Aart de Geus – The economics of such an acquisition would not work. However, if anybody was willing to propose the kind of multiples we’ve seen in the Tensilica offer, we might be willing to entertain an offer. [laughter]

Q4 – What about IPO versus M&A?

Lip-Bu Tan – I’ve invested in over 100 companies that have gone IPO. But you need to remember, you celebrate an IPO for only a nano-second and then the pressure beings to builds. It’s perhaps better to build a company and sell it. Then you can relax and enjoy your success. [laughter]

Q5 – Will the Cloud change things for EDA?

Aart de Geus – In EDA, the answer is no, because there is no such thing as secure data.

Raul Camposano – However, the Cloud and the Internet of Things will change the world!

************************Hot Startups …

A final note of interest from tonight’s EDAC Panel. One of the slides displayed the companies mentioned by poll respondents when asked to name the “Hottest EDA Startup”.

Stop the presses! Someone other than the CEO of Mentor, Synopsys, or Cadence is going to be the Chair of EDAC.

What? Has the world come to an end?

Nope, but it turns out that even staid EDAC has, at last, learned how to innovate. It turns out that Mentor, Synopsys, and Cadence have, at least, seen the light and decided that they shouldn’t always be at the head of the class. As of yesterday, May 31st, there’s a new Chair at EDAC and it’s Kathryn Kranen, President & CEO at Jasper Design Automation.

Kathryn, of course, is well known within the EDA community. She’s been CEO at Jasper since 2003. Prior to Jasper, Kathryn was CEO of Verisity Design, and earlier on served as VP of North American sales at Quickturn. At the outset of her career, after earning a BSEE at Texas A&M, she worked as a design engineer at Rockwell, and then joined Daisy Systems in advance of her role at Quickturn.

In addition, Kathryn was named the 2005 recipient of the Marie R. Pistilli Woman in EDA Achievement Award, and has been an extremely hard working member of the Board of Directors of EDAC for many years.

I was also there on February 29th in Santa Clara, but rather than re-invent the wheel and provide redundant commentary, I’ve taken my notes from the evening and used them to create a Word Cloud. [see below]

If you study it carefully, you’ll see it pretty much sums up the emphasis of the panel discussion: Synopsys’ Aart de Geus, Mentor’s Wally Rhines, Cadence’s Lip-bu Tan, ARM’s Simon Segars, and Gradient’s Ed Cheng in conversation with Ed Sperling, exchanging ideas about Different Problems in EDA: Tools, Power, IP, Memory, Integration, Systems, Hardware, Software, Money and Innovation.

Now let’s look at the Word Cloud without any of the names, just the issues that swirled about in the conversation on February 29th.

When it comes to Westerns, nothing satisfies more than the one about long-time compadres getting together to do one last ride, one last round up, to take one last stand.

It satisfies, because it’s been years in the making and involves all aspects of the genre – long, lonely shots of distant horizons, fading references to the “exploration and settlement of previously untamed frontiers”, and a rich narrative of “rugged, self-sufficient individuals taming a savage wilderness with common sense and direct action.”

This particular type of Western also satisfies, because we know the players well – their faces, their mannerisms, how many notches they’ve got in their gun belts, and whether they normally ride alone or in a posse.

Clint Eastwood’s legendary Unforgiven was one of those compadres-reunited Westerns, full of classic genre atmosphere, yet colored with an evocative late 20th century sensibility …

We know this will be our final chapter with the flinty-eyed loner, his laconic companions, their Western saunter, and possibly with the West itself – not much longer a “dangerous, lawless country in need of taming.”

And so it was with this year’s annual EDAC CEO Forecast Panel. I have no crystal ball and no inside info, but my gut feeling in attending this year’s event was one of overwhelming finality: This will be the last time we’ll see this particular Western play itself out.

And where last year’s EDAC panel was an agitated, techno-urban affair, full of suits and ties, edgy questions and scripted non-answers, this year’s panel was peaceful and calm, full of open-collared shirts and unscripted non-answers.

The kind of Code of The West event you’d expect John Ford [aka Ed Sperling] to agree to – respectful, understated, seasoned and brave. Like a manly chat by the camp fire with John Wayne, Henry Fonda, and Ward Bond at the end of a long day’s trail.

So yep, I just had the sense, sitting there watching the thing unfold, that these compadres who have ridden side-by-side for so long are heading off into the sunset one last time. This was our final chapter with these flinty-eyed companions that we know so well, their Western saunter, and possibly with the West itself.

Because, just as the West is no longer a place of “distant horizons and untamed frontiers,” EDA is no longer wild, no longer a place “where anyone with the right stuff can reinvent himself and start a new life.”

Instead, EDA has become gentrified, commoditized, tamed, encapsulated, predictable, controlled, fenced-in, civilized, and sent way, way offshore. EDA’s for the pious town folk now, not for the wild innovator, the lanky cowboy, the free-range drifter.

It’s not the place where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day. Today it’s a place where nary a word is heard – we’re publicly traded now & muzzled, don’t ya’know – and the skies aren’t cloudy all day, because now there ain’t no Blue Sky at all.

And if there are clouds, they’re Word Clouds [click here] full of telling vocab about an EDA that’s so distant and complex, it actually lives in a Cloud all its own.

So stop for a moment and remember the past. If you close your eyes and let your imagination run free, you can hear them calling: Round ‘em up! Move ‘em out! You can remember back to that era when these compadres of EDA first rode into town, and watch wistfully now as they prepare to ride back out.

**************************

“American history inspired the Western, but the genre’s enduring popularity has more to do with how Americans see and explain themselves than with any actual events.” [Barson & Monahan]

“EDA’s history inspired the EDAC CEO Forecast Panel, but the genre’s enduring popularity has more to do with how EDA sees and explains itself than with any actual events.” [Anon]